Matryona Dvor - characteristics of Matryona. "Matrenin's Dvor" main characters
In Solzhenitsyn's work " Matrenin Dvor"The image of the righteous woman is presented - this is Matryona.
Full name main character- Grigorieva Matryona Vasilievna. The reader learns about her difficult life from the words of the narrator, Ignatich.
The main character is about sixty years old, she is friendly and happy to see everyone, she lives in a rural area, so she has been accustomed to work since childhood. She lived alone in the house and had no children. Her loneliness was brightened up by a new guest; now she got up early for him, cooked, took care of him, and shared her experiences.
Matryona appeared to be a strong and healthy woman, but at times she had seizures and her face glowed yellow. When seizures occurred, the heroine could not walk for several days and lay at home, missing work on the collective farm.
The most precious things for the heroine were her flowers and her cat. She loved her plants very much, took care of them, and in the event of a fire, she saved them first of all.
Matryona loved Thaddeus in her youth, but because of the war they could not be together. She stopped waiting for her lover and married his brother. Thaddeus suddenly returns from the war, marries and starts a family. All Matryona's children have died, she decides to adopt a girl - Thaddeus's daughter. But she also leaves the heroine.
Matryona often selflessly helped her relatives and neighbors, receiving in response only condemnation, not gratitude. Matryona is a truly bright person, capable of self-sacrifice. Despite her illness, Matryona was ready to help everyone, but she was not paid a pension, she worked for nothing.
While the heroine was still alive, Thaddeus began to divide her property, forcing her to give part of the house to his daughter. Matryona dies during the move, no one regrets her death except the guest. The villagers called Matryona stupid and did not understand anything in life; they did not appreciate her help and work.
Matryona is pure in soul, she does not blame other people for disrespectful attitude to her, but on the contrary helps, rejoices at someone else’s harvest or someone else’s happiness. Main character - positive hero, this is reflected in her actions and thoughts.
Essay about Matryona
The skill in depicting the various destinies of people and their characters belongs to the previously banned writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. One of these striking works is the story Matrenin Dvor, written in 1959. It represents fortitude and the ability to be compassionate.
We see a description of the life and life of the village in the post-war period. The main character in the work is the village woman Matryona Grigorievna. She worked on a state farm all her life and was always hardworking. Because of this war, she lost her husband, whom she married before the revolution. And she also lost her children and this left a huge imprint on her soul and in her heart. In the story we see it in Ignatyich’s narration, when he returns from Kazakhstan and begins to live in Matryona’s house. Her trust in a common man is amazing, because she lived in this huge and old house completely alone. Despite this, she tries to maintain comfort, warmth and home. After her death, Ignatyich calls her very dear and kind person, without which it is difficult to imagine the village. The entire sequence of actions gives the work authenticity and truthfulness.
Matryona's life is hard and difficult, but she has not lost faith in people. This village woman never refuses to help anyone. Even if she has urgent matters, she will put the request of the person who turns to her first. All her suffering from that modern power makes itself felt in despair, and without losing heart she finds joy for the soul in constant work and work. She could grab a shovel and go to the garden to take her mind off the melancholy and despondency. She could grab a basket and go into the forest to pick mushrooms or berries. She replaced this emptiness in the family with work.
In the second part of the story, Alexander Isaevich tells us about the heroine’s youth. About how she married sibling your loved one. Here the image of Matryona is contrasted with Thaddeus. He was filled with rage and anger because of the betrayal of his beloved girl. Even after death, Thaddeus’s relatives tried to insult Matryona, calling her unclean and careless.
His vision of many problems reflected in this work, brings his own character and his unsurpassed style of storytelling to Russian literature. Here you can clearly see the attitude of the authorities towards the people, towards their problems, as well as the fierce struggle for survival in the harsh conditions of society, as well as Matryona’s selfless attitude towards all those in need.
Several interesting essays
According to the calendar, spring comes in March. But she is sometimes late. And then it snows again. The days are getting longer than in winter. Snow is melting. Puddles form
IN Central Russia. Thanks to new trends, recent prisoners are now not refused to become school teachers in Vladimir village Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). Solzhenitsyn settles in the hut of a local resident, Matryona Vasilievna, a woman of about sixty who is often ill. Matryona has neither a husband nor children. Her loneliness is brightened up only by the ficus trees planted throughout the house and a languid cat picked out of pity. (See Description of Matryona's house.)
With warm, lyrical sympathy, A.I. Solzhenitsyn describes the difficult life of Matryona. For many years she has not earned a single ruble. On the collective farm, Matryona works “for the sticks of workdays in the accountant’s dirty book.” The law that came out after Stalin’s death finally gives her the right to seek a pension, but not for herself, but for the loss of her husband, who went missing at the front. To do this, you need to collect a bunch of certificates, and then take them many times to social services and the village council, 10-20 kilometers away. Matryona's hut is full of mice and cockroaches that cannot be removed. The only livestock she keeps is a goat, and feeds mainly on “kartovya” (potatoes) no larger than chicken egg: a sandy, unfertilized garden does not produce it larger. But even in such a need, Matryona remains a bright person, With radiant smile. Her work helps her to maintain her good spirits - trips to the forest for peat (with a two-pound sack on her shoulder for three kilometers), cutting hay for the goat, and chores around the house. Due to old age and illness, Matryona has already been released from the collective farm, but the formidable wife of the chairman every now and then orders her to help at work for free. Matryona easily agrees to help her neighbors in their gardens without money. Having received a pension of 80 rubles from the state, she buys herself new felt boots and a coat from a worn railway overcoat - and believes that her life has noticeably improved.
“Matryona Dvor” - the house of Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova in the village of Miltsevo, Vladimir region, the setting of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn
Soon Solzhenitsyn will learn the story of Matryona’s marriage. In her youth, she was going to marry her neighbor Thaddeus. However, in 1914 he was taken to the German war - and he disappeared into obscurity for three years. Without waiting for news from the groom, in the belief that he was dead, Matryona went to marry Thaddeus’s brother, Efim. But a few months later, Thaddeus returned from Hungarian captivity. In his hearts, he threatened to chop Matryona and Efim with an ax, then he cooled down and took another Matryona, from a neighboring village, as his wife. They lived next door to her. Thaddeus was known in Talnovo as a domineering, stingy man. He constantly beat his wife, although he had six children from her. Matryona and Yefim also had six, but none of them lived for more than three months. Efim, having left for another war in 1941, did not return from it. Friendly with Thaddeus’s wife, Matryona begged her youngest daughter, Kira, raised her for ten years as if she were her own, and shortly before Solzhenitsyn’s appearance in Talnovo, she married her to a locomotive driver in the village of Cherusti. Matryona told Alexander Isaevich the story about her two suitors herself, worrying like a young woman.
Kira and her husband had to get a plot of land in Cherusty, and for this they had to quickly erect some kind of building. Old Thaddeus in winter suggested moving the upper room there, attached to Matryonina's house. Matryona was already going to bequeath this room to Kira (and her three sisters were aiming for the house). Under the persistent persuasion of the greedy Thaddeus, Matryona, after two sleepless nights, agreed during her lifetime, breaking part of the roof of the house, to dismantle the upper room and transport it to Cherusti. In front of the hostess and Solzhenitsyn, Thaddeus and his sons and sons-in-law came to Matryona’s yard, clattered with axes, creaked with the boards being torn off, and dismantled the upper room into logs. Matryona's three sisters, having learned how she succumbed to Thaddeus's persuasion, unanimously called her a fool.
Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova - the prototype of the main character of the story
A tractor was brought from Cherusti. The logs from the upper room were loaded onto two sleighs. The fat-faced tractor driver, in order not to make an extra trip, announced that he would pull two sleighs at once - it was better for him in terms of money. The disinterested Matryona herself, fussing, helped load the logs. Already in the dark, the tractor with difficulty pulled the heavy load from the mother’s yard. The restless worker did not stay at home either - she ran away with everyone to help along the way.
She was no longer destined to return alive... At a railway crossing, the cable of an overloaded tractor broke. The tractor driver and Thaddeus’s son rushed to get along with him, and Matryona was carried there with them. At this time, two coupled locomotives approached the crossing, backwards and without turning on the lights. Suddenly flying in, they smashed to death all three who were busy at the cable, mutilated the tractor, and fell off the rails themselves. A fast train with a thousand passengers approaching the crossing almost crashed.
At dawn, everything that was left of Matryona was brought from the crossing on a sled under a dirty bag thrown over it. The body had no legs, no half torso, no left arm. But the face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead. One woman crossed herself and said:
“The Lord left her her right hand.” There will be a prayer to God...
The village began to gather for the funeral. Female relatives wailed over the coffin, but self-interest was evident in their words. And it was not hidden that Matryona’s sisters and her husband’s relatives were preparing for a fight for the deceased’s inheritance, for her an old house. Only Thaddeus’s wife and pupil Kira wept sincerely. Thaddeus himself, who had lost his once beloved woman and son in that disaster, was clearly only thinking about how to save the logs of the upper room that had been scattered during the crash near the railroad. Asking for permission to return them, he kept rushing from the coffins to the station and village authorities.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the village of Miltsevo (in the story - Talnovo). October 1956
On Sunday Matryona and son Thaddeus were buried. The wake has passed. In the next few days, Thaddeus pulled out a barn and a fence from his mother’s sisters, which he and his sons immediately dismantled and transported on a sled. Alexander Isaevich moved in with one of Matryona’s sisters-in-law, who often and always spoke with contemptuous regret about her cordiality, simplicity, about how “stupid she was, she helped strangers for free,” “she didn’t chase after money and didn’t even keep a pig.” For Solzhenitsyn, it was precisely from these disparaging words that he emerged new image Matryona, as he did not understand her, even living with her side by side. This non-covetous woman, a stranger to her sisters, funny to her sisters-in-law, who had not accumulated property before her death, buried six children, but did not have a sociable disposition, pitied a lanky cat, and once at night during a fire she rushed to save not a hut, but her beloved ficus trees - and there is that very righteous man, without which, according to the proverb, the village cannot stand.
The history of the creation of Solzhenitsyn’s work “Matryonin’s Dvor”
In 1962 in the magazine " New world“The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published, which made Solzhenitsyn’s name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same magazine, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including “Matrenin’s Dvor.” The publications stopped there. None of the writer’s works were allowed to be published in the USSR. And in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” was called “A village is not worth it without the righteous.” But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was replaced by the author with 1953. “Matrenin’s Dvor,” as the author himself noted, “is completely autobiographical and reliable.” All notes to the story report on the prototype of the heroine - Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in a Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the very middle name of the narrator - Ignatich - is consonant with the patronymic of A. Solzhenitsyn - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of a Russian village in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn’s work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why does the fate of an old peasant woman, told on a few pages, represent such a thing for us? big interest? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet her spiritual world is endowed with such qualities that we talk to her as if we were talking to Anna Karenina.” Having read these words in " Literary newspaper“, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech relating to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism was always scouring the surface, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones.”
The first title of the story “A village is not worth it without the righteous” contained deep meaning: the Russian village is based on people whose way of life is based on the universal human values of kindness, labor, sympathy, and help. Since a righteous person is called, firstly, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not sin in any way against the rules of morality (rules defining morals, behavior, spiritual and mental qualities, necessary for a person in society). The second name - "Matrenin's Dvor" - slightly changed the angle of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the Matryona yard. On a larger scale of the village, they are blurred; the people surrounding the heroine are often different from her. By titling the story “Matrenin’s Dvor,” Solzhenitsyn focused the readers’ attention on the wonderful world of the Russian woman.
Kind, genre, creative method of the analyzed work
Solzhenitsyn once noted that he rarely turned to the short story genre, for “artistic pleasure”: “In small form You can fit a lot, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form you can hone the edges with great pleasure for yourself.” In the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” all facets are honed with brilliance, and encountering the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on an incident that reveals the character of the main character.
There were two points of view in literary criticism regarding the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. One of them presented Solzhenitsyn’s story as a phenomenon of “village prose.” V. Astafiev, calling “Matrenin’s Dvor” “the pinnacle of Russian short stories,” believed that our “village prose” came from this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” was associated with the original genre of “monumental story” that emerged in the second half of the 1950s. An example of this genre is M. Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man.”
In the 1960s, the genre features of the “monumental story” are recognized in “Matryona’s Court” by A. Solzhenitsyn, “Mother of Man” by V. Zakrutkin, “In the Light of Day” by E. Kazakevich. The main difference between this genre is the image common man, who is the custodian of universal human values. Moreover, the image of a common man is given in sublime tones, and the story itself is focused on high genre. Thus, in the story “The Fate of Man” the features of an epic are visible. And in “Matryona’s Dvor” the focus is on the lives of saints. Before us is the life of Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, a righteous woman and great martyr of the era of “total collectivization” and a tragic experiment over an entire country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint (“Only she had fewer sins than a lame-legged cat”).
Subject of the work
The theme of the story is a description of the life of a patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how thriving selfishness and rapacity are disfiguring Russia and “destroying connections and meaning.” The writer raises a short story serious problems of the Russian village in the early 50s. (her life, customs and morals, the relationship between power and the human worker). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state only needs working hands, and not the person himself: “She was lonely all around, and since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm.” A person, according to the author, should mind his own business. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry at the unscrupulous attitude of others to the work.
An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the heroine’s Christian-Orthodox worldview. Using the example of fate village woman to show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly reveal the measure of humanity in each person. But Matryona dies and this world collapses: her house is torn apart log by log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona’s yard, no one even thinks that with Matryona’s departure something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, is leaving life. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Not a city. Neither the whole land is ours.” The last phrases expand the boundaries of Matryonya’s courtyard (as the heroine’s personal world) to the scale of humanity.
The main characters of the work
The main character of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva. Matryona is a lonely, destitute peasant woman with a generous and selfless soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own, and raised other people’s children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - a house: “... she didn’t feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, like neither her labor nor her goods...”.
The heroine suffered many hardships in life, but did not lose the ability to empathize with others' joy and sorrow. She is selfless: she sincerely rejoices at someone else’s good harvest, although she herself never has one in the sand. Matryona’s entire wealth consists of a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matryona is the concentration of the best features national character: shy, understands the “education” of the narrator, respects him for it. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, lack of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, and hard work. She worked on a collective farm for a quarter of a century, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only get it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never achieved a pension. Life was extremely difficult. She obtained grass for the goat, peat for warmth, collected old stumps torn up by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those around her to survive.
Analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual parts in the story are symbolic in nature. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of a Russian woman. As noted in critical literature, the appearance of the heroine is like an icon, and her life is like the lives of saints. Her house symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he escapes from global flood. Matryona's death symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to others. Therefore, the attitude towards it is different. Matryona is surrounded by her sisters, sister-in-law, adopted daughter Kira, and the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated it. She lived poorly, squalidly, alone - a “lost old woman”, exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost never showed up at her house; they all condemned Matryona in unison, saying that she was funny and stupid, that she had been working for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona’s kindness and simplicity - and unanimously judged her for it. Among the people around her great sympathy The author treats his heroine; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona’s house during her lifetime.
Matryona's courtyard is one of key images story. The description of the yard, the house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors Matryona lives “in the wilderness.” It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of a house and a person: if the house is destroyed, its owner will also die. This unity is already stated in the title of the story. For Matryona, the hut is filled with a special spirit and light; a woman’s life is connected with the “life” of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to demolish the hut.
Plot and composition
The story consists of three parts. In the first part we're talking about about how fate threw the hero-storyteller to a station with a strange name for Russian places - Torfoprodukt. Former prisoner and now school teacher, eager to find peace in some remote and quiet corner Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of the elderly Matryona, who has experienced life. “Perhaps to some from the village, who are richer, Matryona’s hut did not seem good-natured, but for us that autumn and winter it was quite good: it had not yet leaked from the rains and the cold winds did not blow the stove heat out of it right away, only in the morning , especially when the wind was blowing from the leaky side. Besides Matryona and me, the other people living in the hut were a cat, mice and cockroaches.” They find it right away mutual language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matryona recalls her youth, the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in the First World War. Wooed her younger brother missing husband, Efim, left alone after death with his youngest children in his arms. Matryona felt sorry for Efim and married someone she didn’t love. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. Hard life did not harden Matryona's heart. Caring for her daily bread, she walked her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor worries. Matryona dies while helping Thaddeus and his sons drag across railway on the sleigh is part of his own hut, bequeathed to Kira. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona’s death and decided to take away the inheritance for the young people during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the owner of the house. Description of the funeral and wake was shown true attitude to Matryona people close to her. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of obligation than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona’s property. And Thaddeus doesn’t even come to the wake.
Artistic features of the analyzed story
The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the heroine’s life story. In the first part of the work, the entire narrative about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a man who has endured a lot in his life, who dreamed of “getting lost and lost in the very interior of Russia.” The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with her surroundings, and becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine talks about herself. The combination of lyrical and epic pages, the coupling of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narrative and its tone. This is the way the author goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It opens with an opening story about a tragedy at a railway siding. We will learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - Matryona’s “radiant”, “kind”, “apologetic” smile. Nevertheless, by the end of the story the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tone of the phrase, the selection of “colors” one can feel author's attitude to Matryona: “From red frosty sun The frozen window of the entryway, now shortened, glowed slightly pink, and Matryona’s face was warmed by this reflection.” And then it’s straight author's description: “Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.” Even after the terrible death of the heroine, her “face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead.”
Incarnated in Matryona folk character, which primarily manifests itself in her speech. Expressiveness and bright individuality are given to her language by the abundance of colloquial, dialectal vocabulary (prispeyu, kuzhotkamu, letota, molonya). Her manner of speech, the way she pronounces her words, is also deeply folkish: “They began with some kind of low, warm purring, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” “Matryonin’s Dvor” minimally includes the landscape; he pays more attention to the interior, which appears not on its own, but in a lively interweaving with the “residents” and with sounds - from the rustling of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficus trees and a lanky cat. Every detail here characterizes not only peasant life, Matryonin's yard, but also the narrator. The narrator's voice reveals a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet in him - in the way he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, and how he evaluates them and her. The poetic feeling is manifested in the author’s emotions: “Only she had fewer sins than a cat...”; “But Matryona rewarded me...” The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, turning the speech into blank verse:
“The Veems lived next to her / and did not understand / that she was the very righteous person / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village would not stand. /Neither the city./Nor our whole land.”
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles on language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, his fantastic commitment to Dahl (researchers note that Solzhenitsyn borrowed approximately 40% of the vocabulary in the story from Dahl’s dictionary), and his inventiveness in vocabulary. In the story "Matrenin's Dvor" Solzhenitsyn came to the language of preaching.
Meaning of the work
“There are such born angels,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restraint,” as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even if their feet touch its surface? Each of us has met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, these are righteous people, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), took advantage of their goodness, good moments They answered them in kind, they disposed, and immediately plunged again into our doomed depths.”
What is the essence of Matryona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, spoken much later. In creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 50s. Matryona's righteousness lies in her ability to preserve her humanity even in such inaccessible conditions. As N.S. Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live “without lying, without being deceitful, without condemning one’s neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy.”
The story was called “brilliant,” “a truly brilliant work.” Reviews about it noted that among Solzhenitsyn’s stories it stands out for its strict artistry, integrity of poetic expression, and consistency of artistic taste.
Story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn's "Matrenin's Dvor" - for all times. It is especially relevant today, when questions moral values And life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.
Point of view
Anna Akhmatova
When his big work came out (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), I said: all 200 million should read this. And when I read “Matryona’s Dvor”, I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
In the end, it is not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, but rather the author’s frank admiration for the beggarly selflessness and the no less frank desire to exalt and contrast it with the rapacity of the owner nesting in the people around her, close to her.
(From the book “The Word Makes Its Way.”
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.)
This is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn went to his place of work. There were many names such as “Peat Product” in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it “Tyr-pyr”) was a railway station 180 kilometers and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn had a chance to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a crude name, a village with a tiny market, a landlady’s house Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova and Matryona herself, the righteous woman and sufferer. The photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest puts a cot and, pushing aside the owner's ficus trees, arranges a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka numbered about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: primary, seven-year, secondary and evening schools for working youth. Solzhenitsyn received a referral to high school— it was in an old one-story building. The school year began with an August teachers' conference, so, having arrived in Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering of grades 8-10 had time to go to the Kurlovsky district for the traditional meeting. “Isaich,” as his colleagues dubbed him, could, if desired, refer to serious illness, but no, he didn’t talk to anyone about her. We just saw how he was looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and answered questions briefly: “I make medicinal drinks.” He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my purpose, with my past. What could they know, what could they tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why would I chatter to myself? I didn't have that manner. I was a conspirator to the end." Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, tall man in a suit and tie, who, like all the teachers, wore a hat, coat or raincoat, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when the document on rehabilitation arrives in six months - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send the teacher for a certificate. No talking when the wife starts arriving. “What does anyone care? I live with Matryona and live.” Many were alarmed (was he a spy?) that he walked everywhere with a Zorkiy camera and took pictures that were not at all what amateurs usually take: instead of family and friends - houses, dilapidated farms, boring landscapes.
Arriving at school at the beginning school year, he proposed his own methodology - he gave all classes a test, divided the students into strong and mediocre based on the results, and then worked individually.
In the lessons everyone received separate task, so there was neither the opportunity nor the desire to write off. Not only the solution to the problem was valued, but also the method of solution. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher wasted time on “trifles.” He knew exactly who needed to be called to the board and when, who to ask more often, who to trust independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. He didn’t enter the class, but burst into it. He ignited everyone with his energy and knew how to structure a lesson in such a way that there was no time to get bored or doze off. He respected his students. He never shouted, didn’t even raise his voice.
And only outside the classroom Solzhenitsyn was silent and withdrawn. He went home after school, ate the “cardboard” soup Matryona had prepared and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lived, did not organize parties, did not participate in the fun, but read and wrote everything. “I loved Matryona Isaich,” Shura Romanova, Matryona’s adopted daughter (in the story she is Kira), used to say. “It used to be that she would come to me in Cherusti, and I would persuade her to stay longer.” “No,” he says. “I have Isaac - I need to cook for him, light the stove.” And back home."
The lodger also became attached to the lost old woman, valuing her selflessness, conscientiousness, heartfelt simplicity, and smile, which he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I got used to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening classes, didn’t bother me with any questions.” She completely lacked womanly curiosity, and the lodger also did not stir her soul, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the absurd death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the crossing of one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book “Alexander Solzhenitsyn” by Lyudmila Saraskina)
Matryona's yard is as poor as before
Solzhenitsyn’s acquaintance with the “conda”, “interior” Russia, in which he so wanted to end up after the Ekibastuz exile, a few years later was embodied in the world-famous story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. This year marks 40 years since its creation. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself this work of Solzhenitsyn has become a second-hand book rarity. This book is not even in Matryona’s yard, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn’s story, now lives. “I had pages from a magazine, my neighbors once asked me when they started reading it at school, but they never returned it,” complains Lyuba, who today is raising her grandson within the “historical” walls on a disability benefit. Matryona got her hut from her mother - herself younger sister Matryona. The hut was transported to Mezinovsky from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn’s story - Talnovo), where Matryona Zakharova (Solzhenitsyn - Matryona Grigorieva) lived future writer. In the village of Miltsevo, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected for Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s visit here in 1994. Soon after Solzhenitsyn’s memorable visit, Matrenina’s fellow countrymen uprooted the window frames and floorboards from this unguarded building on the outskirts of the village.
The “new” Mezinovskaya school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the unpreserved building of the old one, in which Solzhenitsyn taught classes, about a thousand studied. Over the past half century, not only has the Miltsevskaya river become shallow and the peat reserves in the surrounding swamps have become depleted, but also neighboring villages. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn’s Thaddeus has not ceased to exist, calling the people’s good “ours” and believing that losing it is “shameful and stupid.”
Matryona's crumbling house, moved to a new location without a foundation, is sunk into the ground, and buckets are placed under the thin roof when it rains. Like Matryona’s, cockroaches are in full swing here, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of their own and two that have strayed. A former foundry worker at a local factory, Lyuba, like Matryona, who once spent months straightening out her pension, goes through the authorities to extend her disability benefits. “Nobody except Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. “Once one came in a jeep, called himself Alexey, looked around the house and gave me money.” Behind the house, like Matryona’s, there is a vegetable garden of 15 acres, in which Lyuba plants potatoes. As before, “mushy potatoes,” mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. Besides cats, she doesn’t even have a goat in her yard, like Matryona had.
This is how many Mezinov righteous people lived and live. Local historians write books about the great writer’s stay in Mezinovsky, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays “On the difficult fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate“, as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev’s “Virgin Land” and “Malaya Zemlya”. They are thinking about reviving Matryona’s museum hut again on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matryonin’s yard still lives the same life as half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.
Gang Yu. Solzhenitsyn’s Service // New Time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V. A. Solzhenitsyn. To the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” // Russian literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live a lie. Guidelines on the study of creativity of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: KhSU Publishing House, 1997.
MurinD. One hour, one day, one human life in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. — M.,
1991.
SaraskinaL. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. — M.: Young
Guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.
ChalmaevV. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and Work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. The works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.
In 1963, one of the stories of the Russian thinker and humanist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published. It is based on events from the author’s biography. The publication of his books has always caused a huge resonance not only in the Russian-speaking society, but also among Western readers. But the image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” is unique. Nothing like this before village prose did not have. And that’s why the work took special place in domestic literature.
Plot
The story is told from the author's perspective. A certain teacher and former camp inmate goes in the summer of 1956 at random, wherever his eyes look. His goal is to get lost somewhere in the dense Russian outback. Despite the ten years he spent in the camp, the hero of the story still hopes to find a job and teach. He succeeds. He settles in the village of Talnovo.
The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” begins to take shape even before her appearance. A random acquaintance helps the main character find shelter. After a long and unsuccessful search, he offers to go to Matryona, warning that “she lives in a desolate place and is sick.” They are heading towards her.
Matryona's Domain
The house is old and rotten. It was built many years ago big family, but now it was inhabited only by one woman of about sixty. Without a description of the poor life of the village, the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” would not be so insightful. The image of Matryona - the heroine of the story - fully corresponds to the atmosphere of desolation that reigned in the hut. Yellow, sickly face, tired eyes...
The house is full of mice. Among its inhabitants, in addition to the owner herself, are cockroaches and a lanky cat.
The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” is the basis of the story. Starting from it, the author reveals his spiritual world and depicts character traits other characters.
From the main character the narrator learns about her difficult fate. She lost her husband at the front. She lived her entire life alone. Later, her guest finds out that for many years she has not received a penny: she works not for money, but for sticks.
She was not happy with the tenant and tried to persuade him for some time to find a cleaner and more comfortable house. But the guest’s desire to find a quieter place determined the choice: he stayed with Matryona.
While the teacher was staying with her, the old woman got up before dark and prepared a simple breakfast. And it seemed that some meaning appeared in Matryona’s life.
Peasant image
The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” is amazing rare combination selflessness and hard work. This woman has been working for half a century, not to make a living, but out of habit. Because he cannot imagine any other existence.
It should be said that the fate of the peasantry always attracted Solzhenitsyn, since his ancestors belonged to this class. And he believed that it was precisely the hard work, sincerity and generosity that distinguished the representatives of this social stratum. Which is confirmed by the sincere true image Matryona in the story "Matrenin's Dvor".
Fate
In intimate conversations in the evenings, the landlady tells the tenant the story of her life. Efim’s husband died in the war, but first his brother wooed her. She agreed and was listed as his fiancée, but during World War II he went missing and she didn’t wait for him. She married Efim. But Thaddeus returned.
Not a single child of Matryona survived. And then she became a widow.
Its end is tragic. She dies due to her naivety and kindness. This event ends the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. The image of the righteous Matryona is sadder because, despite all her good qualities, she remains misunderstood by her fellow villagers.
Loneliness
Matryona lived in big house all her life alone, except for the short-lived female happiness that was destroyed by the war. And also those years during which she raised Thaddeus’s daughter. He married her namesake and they had six children. Matryona asked him to raise a girl, which he did not refuse. But her adopted daughter also left her.
The image of Matryona in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryona’s Dvor” is amazing. Neither eternal poverty, nor insults, nor all kinds of oppression destroy it. The best way It was a job for the woman to regain her good spirits. And after the work, she became satisfied, enlightened, with a kind smile.
The last righteous woman
She knew how to rejoice in someone else's happiness. Having not accumulated goodness throughout her life, she did not become bitter, and retained the ability to sympathize. Not a single hard work in the village could be done without her participation. Despite her illness, she helped other women, harnessed herself to the plow, forgetting about her old age and an illness that tormented her for more than twenty years.
This woman never refused anything to her relatives, and her inability to preserve her own “goods” led to the fact that she lost her upper room - her only property, apart from the old rotten house. The image of Matryona in the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn personifies selflessness and virtue, which for some reason did not evoke either respect or response from others.
Thaddeus
Righteous female character contrasted with her failed husband Thaddeus, without whom there would be incomplete system images "Matrenin's Dvor" is a story in which, in addition to the main character, there are other persons. But Thaddeus is a clear contrast to the main character. Returning from the front alive, he did not forgive his fiancee for betrayal. Although, it should be said that she did not love his brother, but only pitied him. Understanding that it is difficult for his family without a mistress. The death of Matryona at the end of the story is a consequence of the stinginess of Thaddeus and his relatives. Avoiding unnecessary expenses, they decided to transport the room faster, but did not have time, as a result of which Matryona was hit by a train. Only one remains intact right hand. But even after terrible events Thaddeus looks at her dead body indifferently, indifferently.
There are also many sorrows and disappointments in the fate of Thaddeus, but the difference between the two characters is that Matryona was able to save her soul, but he was not. After her death, the only thing he cares about is Matrenino’s meager property, which he immediately drags into his house. Thaddeus does not come to the wake.
The image of Holy Rus', which poets so often sang, dissipates with her departure. A village cannot stand without a righteous man. The image of Matryona, the heroine in Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryona’s Dvor,” is the remnant of a pure Russian soul, which is still alive, but already on its last legs. Because righteousness and kindness are valued less and less in Russia.
The story, as already said, is based on real events. The only difference is in the name settlement and some little things. The heroine's name was actually Matryona. She lived in one of the villages of the Vladimir region, where the author spent 1956-1957. It was planned to turn her house into a museum in 2011. But Matrenin's yard burned down. In 2013, the house-museum was restored.
The work was first published in the literary magazine “New World”. Solzhenitsyn's previous story caused a positive reaction. The story of the righteous woman gave rise to many disputes and discussions. And yet, critics had to admit that the story was created by a great and truthful artist, capable of returning it to the people native language and continue the traditions of Russian classical literature.
Matryona Timofeevna image and characterization according to plan
1. general characteristics . Matryona Timofeevna is the main female heroine of the poem “”, to whom the “Peasant Woman” part is entirely dedicated.
Matryona Timofeevna's age is approaching forty years, but she still retains traces of her former beauty. Hard peasant labor did not break the woman. She carries herself with great dignity and sedateness.
Matryona Timofeevna is not afraid and loves her work, realizing that it is the key to the whole peasant life.
2. Typical image. The fate of Matryona Timofeevna is similar to thousands of ordinary peasant women. With very early years the girl began to help her parents with housework. Youth and excess strength allowed Matryona not only to manage her work, but also to have time to sing and dance, in which she became a real master.
Live in parental home Overall it was a very happy time for Matryona. As was customary at that time, Matryona’s parents found a groom. It was very difficult for the cheerful and lively girl to part with her home. At first, life in someone else's house seemed unbearable to her. In the absence of her husband, the girl was reproached at every step. It was at this time that she fell in love with her Philip, who became her protector.
The tragic situation of women of that era is best expressed in the saying: “He hits - he loves.” Matryona Timofeevna believes that she is very lucky with her husband. However, her story about an undeserved beating indicates the opposite. If Philip hit Matryona several times simply because she did not have time to answer him in time, then the woman had to meekly carry out any of his orders. The narrator calls this situation “we always get along.”
3. Tragedy. Matryona Timofeevna received the strongest incentive to live after the birth of her son. It was no longer so difficult for her among her husband’s relatives. She established a warm, trusting relationship with her grandfather Savely. Trouble crept up unnoticed. Infant mortality was generally very high at that time, mainly due to insufficient child care.
For modern man the death of Demushka, gnawed alive by pigs, looks simply monstrous. The attitude of Matryona Timofeevna herself is very characteristic. She is ready to come to terms with the death of her son (“God took the baby”), but almost goes crazy during the autopsy, considering this the greatest sin and abuse of an innocent child.
4. Black stripe. Misfortunes never come alone. Matryona had only just recovered a little from the death of her first-born when her parents died. After this, the woman devoted herself completely to work and raising other children. Another blow awaited her ahead: her husband was illegally taken into the army. The loss of the head of the family could lead to starvation. There was no way to count on help from Philip’s relatives and fellow villagers.
5. Women's happiness. Matryona Timofeevna was incredibly lucky. Thanks to the governor's wife, she got her husband back. Ordinary peasants very rarely sought justice. But does this isolated case allow us to consider Matryona “lucky”? All of her past life was filled with suffering, humiliation and hard work. Currently, the previous problems have been supplemented by concern for the fate of grown-up children. Matryona herself answers this question: “The keys to female happiness... are abandoned, lost.”
